With ever-developing network technologies, network devices have been adopted for forwarding messages. However, since varieties of services, including audio and video services, have been integrated into conventional data communication networks, network devices are expected to implement more service processing when forwarding a message than just forwarding the message. For example, a network device is required not only to forward messages, but also to undertake processing of telephone calls and faxes, to collect specified service statistics, to calculate fees, to carry out security-related measures and to monitor and regulate traffic flows so that the network may achieve the best performance and stay in an acceptable state.
A conventional solution for carrying out multiple service procedures in forwarding a message includes interconnecting multiple network devices having different service capabilities, in which case the multiple service procedures are carried out through collaboration of the multiple network devices. Because different network devices are usually produced by different manufacturers, the above solution has disadvantages such as high costs of devices, poor interoperability between devices and inconvenience in management and maintenance.
At present, in Personal Computer (PC) industry, with the release of multiple industry standards, a PC can be equipped with multiple service capabilities by installing PCI cards from different manufacturers on one PC through a PCI bus.
It is expected that the method adopted by the PC industry may be adopted for integrating components capable of forwarding messages and components with other service capabilities into one network device, so that varieties of service procedures can be implemented in the process of forwarding messages by the network device with improved interoperability between devices from different manufacturers and lowered cost of the device. However, according to the conventional art, the internal connection and communication manner adopted in integrating PCI cards into a PC via a PCI bus is only suitable for PCs, and such connection and communication manner cannot be applied to network communications. When different components with different service capabilities are integrated into one network device, it is a technical problem yet to be solved that how to communicate between these different components in the network device to enable the components to work together to carry out various service procedures.